Mel Will Be Just Fine
by Timber Maniacs
Summary: The history of Melrose Lang, raised in the Galbadian Desert Prison, current student at Balamb Garden, and future Garden mechanic and pilot. Now with death, destruction, and swashbuckling!
1. Chapter 1

_Written by member Melrose Lang_

In her daydream, Melrose Lang was riding an Estharian Motoslave 480, relishing in the pulsing, humming vibration of the cold, solid chrome between her knees, delighting in the sensitivity of the handlebar-mounted accelerator, barely able to hear the 480-Chocobo-power engine over the sound of the wind roaring past her ears. In her daydream, Melrose Lang was cruising at maximum velocity along an empty desert highway, and there was nobody there to say, "Slow down!" or "Return that stolen vehicle immediately!" In her daydream, Melrose Lang was as free as a person could be, a hundred miles behind her and a million miles in front of her, and the sun never set on her freedom. In her daydream, Melrose Lang was decidedly _not_sitting in the breakroom at the Galbadian Desert Prison idly pretending to do her "homework."

No, no. That was her reality.

"Hey, hon, you about done with that?" A ragged, familiar drawl snapped her out of her reverie and she looked guiltily at the door. Standing there, eyeing the girl with no small degree of derision, was Loreen, the Warden's assistant. Loreen, sensing Mel's need for female attention, had agreed to spend her morning and afternoon breaks teaching the poor young thing how to read, write, and perform basic math. She'd sit there, smoking and hacking and watching as Mel struggled with an education that came in 15-minute increments.

Mel was supposed to be reading an article from some magazine that Loreen had produced from her desk drawer. It was about perfume. Mel knew that Loreen wore perfume, and she had sampled some of the scent her mother had mixed a long time ago, but had ultimately found that perfume was not something she was at all interested in learning about.

"What did you learn?" Loreen asked, waddling over to Mel and plopping down in the chair, as though the 25-foot walk from her desk to the break room had truly winded her. She pulled out a long, brown cigarette and placed it between her lips. Mel watched, half-fascinated and half-disgusted, as the tip flamed, dulled, and glowed brightly in the smoky, fluorescent room. She stifled a cough. Loreen flashed her a warning look and gestured impatiently at the magazine.

"I learned that perfume smells," Mel replied tartly before flopping the magazine shut on the table. "Why do I have to read this stuff? Isn't there anything else?"

"Well, I can't show you the prisoner files, can I? You'd have nightmares for the rest of your life, and Melvin would never forgive me."

Mel rolled her eyes in the exaggerated manner of a very annoyed 10-year-old. "Hyne, Loreen, if you wanna sleep with him so bad, just ask."

That rather impetuous comment was met with a smart slap on the cheek and a quivering, angry glare from the older woman. "That's none of your business, you little smartass."

Mel rubbed her cheek even though it didn't hurt. "I'm just saying. He's lonely. He needs somebody."

"Me, huh?" Loreen snorted, and a puff of smoke escaped her nostrils in an unflattering way. "Right. Whatever you say kid." She flipped the magazine open to the advice column and pointed to the first question. "Read that out loud, let's see how your oral reading is doing."

Mel sighed and picked up the offending book. "'Dear Ms. Know-It-All:'" Mel grinned slyly for just a moment. "'My coworker has a daughter who is driving me crazy. However, I would very much like to sleep with him. How can I deal with his daughter and still get into his pants?'"

That time, the slap on the cheek actually did hurt, and Mel found herself with a double-assignment for the night.

"How was school today, Mel-baby?" Melvin asked in a tone that tried too hard to care.

"It's not school, Dad. It's…it's…" She struggled for the right word, then gave up. "Boring," she finished dejectedly. "And Loreen is a bitch."

"Hey!" he snapped, cracking open a beer at the same moment so that the word sounded like a gunshot. "Do not call her that. Loreen is a nice lady, and I appreciate what she's trying to do to help you. She's the only woman in this Hyne-forsaken prison who gives a rat's ass about you, so you treat her with respect!" He took a long swig and headed toward the study, where his terminal was waiting for his nightly news-crawl. He muttered as he went. "If your mom was still here, she'd slap you silly for talking like that about anyone. For Hyne's sake, didn't I raise you better than that?"

The door shut behind him, and Mel returned to her dinner. She was pleased with how it tasted. She was getting really good at reading the directions on the back of the box, and tonight she'd hardly burned a thing. The upstairs neighbors wouldn't have any bad smells to complain about tonight, she thought with satisfaction.

After leaving a plate out for Melvin and cleaning up her mess, she curled up behind the hanging sheet that served as her bedroom door – it partitioned one corner of the living room until she had a tiny, triangular room. This was where she slept, read, dressed, and daydreamed. She spent a lot of time that night on her Motoslave, racing across the desert with a hundred miles behind her, a million miles in front of her, and all the freedom a 10-year-old girl could dream of. She was already asleep when Melvin crept into her makeshift room and kissed her gently on the forehead.

"I love you, baby," he whispered into her dark hair. She didn't stir.


	2. Chapter 2

Sometimes at night Mel dreamed about something that happened.

She used to sleep with her mother, in her mother's bed, while her father slept on the sofa. The most appropriate word to describe the early nights of her life was "sweltering." Her mother was like a furnace at night, putting out wave after wave of heat, and both Mel and Rose would awaken the next morning practically drenched in sweat. Rose cried a lot in the last couple of years, often crying herself to sleep. When the tears stopped helping her sleep, she started taking little white pills out of a blue bottle, and they made her happy and tired and she had no trouble sleeping through the night.

One night, as Mel dreams it, Rose was crying. As usual, she reached her large arm over the little girl and closed her fingers around the bottle on the bedside table. This time, she took more than one. She kept swallowing them, over and over again, the way Mel ate chocolate drops sometimes when nobody was watching. After a long time, her crying faded away, and she knocked about ten pills into her hand. She thrust her hand out toward her daughter. "Swallow these, Mel," she said dreamily. "They taste just like candy." Mel knew that Rose swallowed them because she was sad and couldn't sleep, but Mel wasn't sad, and she was in fact very tired. She said, "No, thank you, Mom," but Rose became very upset and used the last bit of her strength to force Mel's mouth open. One by one, she dropped in the pills. One of them slid down Mel's throat, but she kept the others firmly clamped under her tongue. She didn't want them. She struggled, until Rose finally weakened and collapsed on the pillows, snoring gently.

Mel was relieved that her mother was finally asleep. She spit the pills out onto the floor and laid down on the pillow. Mel was sad for the sleeping form. Tomorrow, she decided, she would draw her a beautiful picture, with lots of flowers and hearts on it. Satisfied that this would cure Rose's depression, she snuggled against the woman's sweaty shoulder and fell into a hard, plummeting, deep sleep.

When she awoke the next morning, the bed was very, very cold.

Mel didn't know if this was really how it happened, but reality could do nothing to change her dreams.

"All right, you can come out now," a growling, raspy voice called out from across the parking bay. "They're all inside."

Mel stepped out of the shadows and began to stride purposely towards the source of the voice. Speaking with a determination and a maturity that belied her 11 years, she barked at the old man roughly. "Why the hell do I have to keep hiding every time they bring the prisoners in?" she asked. "It's not like they aren't totally chained up. It's not like they could just decide to go after me. They can't even walk really."

"Mel," Croy answered, and the patience in his voice sounded forced and strained. "We just don't need them to know you're here at all. It's better to be safe than sorry. You're just a little girl, Mel, you don't know what they could do."

"Yes I do, Croy," she responded venomously. "Loreen's been letting me read their files. I know what sick assholes they are." _Besides,_ she added internally. _I've been playing chess with a bunch of those guys._ She wanted to tell Croy about her secret games with some of the prisoners, but he'd hit the roof. Plus, her dad would get fired if anybody knew. They weren't so bad, the guys she played with. One of them used to be a teacher, and he taught her some history lessons while they played through the bars. There were some creepy guys though, guys she knew were really bad. She had to walk past them to get to her friends' cells, and they stared and said things she didn't understand. One man – or devil, or whatever he was – just glared every time she walked by, saying everything without saying anything. She only had to look into his eyes once to know that she never wanted to do it again. They were red.

"Watch your mouth," Croy replied sharply. "You know ladies don't use that kinda language."

Mel expelled a short, sharp laugh. "Bullshit. And I suppose ladies don't do oil changes or tire rotations or transmission repair, huh? Besides," she added, peering up at his six-foot, four-inch frame. "I may be a little girl, but you're an old man. I could probably outrun them faster than you could."

"Why is this so important to you anyway?" Croy asked, any existing mirth in his speech suddenly gone.

Mel's confidence crumbled a bit, and she looked down at the floor, scuffing the concrete with the toe of her boot. "I just wanna see the APC in action, you know? I wanna see it being used for something."

Croy sighed and stared at the girl for a moment. Then he pulled out a large box of bleached towels. "Go clean out the inside of Number 131. I hear someone got carsick on their way in."

Mel grimaced and took the box grudgingly. "Glad to see you're still enjoying the free labor," she muttered, and he laughed, obviously relieved that things were going to get back to normal now. With a sigh, she heaved the box to the recently-arrived APC and opened the back door. As she cleaned up the mess, a pair of red eyes drifted in the back of her mind and stared at her. For an instant, she thought she felt a heavy, sweaty arm wrap protectively around her shoulders, but then the sensation was gone and all that was left was the smell of vomit and iron chains.


End file.
